I like the Rock.
I know, I know. He used to be a wrestler, but he was a pretty good wrestler. He also makes a great “good” guy and an annoying “bad” guy, and he can even be that sweet guy who pulls on your heart strings (watch Game Plan).
But GI Joe Retaliation isn’t about the Rock.
Bruce Willis is also in it!
Put those two together and you get lots of fighting, tons of guns, a handful of handsome grins, and some witty zingers that will make you smile. (Oh yeah, and there’s Channing Tatum being all that too.)
Of course, there were some drawbacks to GI Joe. The biggest one starts with an “H” and ends with an “O”. Don’t get me wrong. I like Hasbro. I just don’t like watching a movie based on a toy (Transformers, Chuckie, Battleship–I actually really liked Battleship, so don’t count that one.)
And GI Joe wasn’t even a friendly toy. He hardly ever played nicely with my Barbie dolls. He was a brute and mean and usually ended up knocking over the tiny furniture.
Once I got over the whole army barbie thing though, I actually sort of enjoyed the movie. However, I still think lines like, “Call out the Joes” and “Where would we be without the Joes?” should probably not have been part of the script. I probably shouldn’t have even rewritten them here. Ugh.
I do like the idea of an elite group of government protected men and women who secretly defend our country. Let’s just NOT call them “Joes”. It’s way to hard for me to place that scruffy looking doll my brother used to pelt my barbie dreamland with as the great leader of that group. And was Bruce Willis supposed to be the original “Joe”? That didn’t really come across in the movie, but it seems like a good idea.
Overall, I give “Joe” a 6.0 just cause I like Dwayne Johnson. Without him, it would be a definite 5.5. And without Bruce Willis, it would slip down to a “4.5”.
It has good actions scenes, a plot (don’t smirk, a lot of these movies don’t!), a surprisingly touching scene about fathers and daughters, and some super cool gadgets (check out Firefly’s motorcycle). Oh, and I almost forgot about that whole fight on the mountain event with Snake-Eyes. (Do they really travel by way of zip lines? Yikes!)
It’s cram packed with all the things a good action movie needs. And I don’t think it really matters if you didn’t see the first GI Joe movie. I saw it, and the only thing I remembered was the thing with the president. Jonathan Pryce, by the way, did an awesome job playing that part. He really picked up on a lot of Arnold Vosloo’s (Zartan) mannerisms. That will make sense when you see the movie…or maybe you will need to see the first one to appreciate Mr. Pryce’s great acting. Anyway…
Have fun at the movies!
(Next week I’ll review “Admission”)
